“Pride Weekend”
Born and growing up in seacoast New Hampshire, Dave Bryant Hayward became an activist while a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. from 1967 -1971.
Desperately coming out to the legendary Frank Kameny, president of the D.C. Mattachine Society, in a May 1969 phone call, Dave learned where the gay bars were in D.C. In the Fall he joined the Mattachine Society at an outdoor reception, and co-founded the Washington, D.C. Gay Liberation Front in January 1970. The GLF celebrated the first anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots at a D.C. intown park in 1970, and also picketed the gay bar The Lost and Found on Capitol Hill for its multiple carding policies of women and people of color.
Dave is thrilled to have campaigned for Dr. Kameny for the House of Representatives in 1971, as the first openly gay man to run for Congress. Also he wrote for the GWU Hatchet newspaper all four years, often covering LGBTQ themes in the arts, and for the DC GLF Newsletter.
Since October 1971 Dave has aided and abetted every Atlanta Pride. One of the core collective producing Atlanta Pride in 1972, the first Pride March in the streets, Dave is honored to be thrown out of two gay bars for promoting Pride.
Initially “the city too busy to hate” spewed backlash for a gay march in the streets, which abated after a successful event, culminating in Georgia’s first openly gay political appointee:
Charlie St. John appointed by Mayor Sam Massell, to Atlanta’s Community Relations Commission in January 1973.
From 1977 to1979 he and his former partner Greg James anchored “Gay Digest” on Radio Free Georgia WRFG FM 90.1, and he and Greg produced Atlanta and Georgia’s first two LGBTQ film festivals in 1979 under the auspices of the newly formed Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Center.
Primarily Dave’s mania for social justice expresses in his writing, and he has published in local, regional, national, and international media, including The Advocate, OUT Magazine, Canada’s LGBTQ magazine Frontiers, and most recently in Georgia Voice, where he reveals our LGBTQ roots, and pens tributes to pathfinders and pioneers and trailblazers.
After founding Touching Up Our Roots in 2002, in 2016 Dave became one of Atlanta Pride’s Grand Marshals. In 2015 he created Our Founding Valentines with Atlanta Pride to recognize community icons, and in 2016 he initiated the LGBTQ Story Tour with Pride and with the LGBT Institute at the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Since 2017 he and Lesbian herstorian Maria Helena Dolan have co-hosted the Story Tour.
Currently with a grant from the Georgia Humanities Council, Emory University professor Eric Solomon and Dave are posting the LGBTQ Story Tour online, for an October launch in conjunction with October Pride and National Coming Out Day October 15th.
That’s All Folks!
Dave Bryant Hayward
Coordinator, Touching Up Our Roots, Inc.: Georgia’s LGBTQ Story Project